"Jezz Bezos and Elon Musk emit more carbon pollution in 90 minutes than the average human does in their entire life."
...
“Half of the world’s emissions come from the richest 10% of people. The wealthiest 1% by income account for 16% of emissions, which is more than the poorest two-thirds of people in the world,”

gizmodo.com/billionaires-are-t…
#inequality #CarbonFootprint

Billionaires Are the One Case Where Personal Choices Can Affect Climate Change

A new study found that half of the world’s carbon emissions come from the richest 10% of people.

^{Matthew Gault (Gizmodo)}

Ready for news that will shock nobody? It turns out globalization mostly helps out the richest 10% and has little to no impact on the poorest.

"The influence of globalization on income inequalities worldwide was greater than we had expected. We were particularly surprised that these differences were mainly due to the gains of the richest and that the lower income groups benefited little or not at all."

phys.org/news/2024-05-main-ben…

#economics #inequality #globalization

The top 10% are the main beneficiaries of globalization, says study

The income of many people around the world has considerably increased due to the economic globalization of the last 50 years. However, these income gains are unevenly distributed. A study by Dr.

^{Linda Schädler (Phys.org)}

The Performance Inequality Gap, 2024

infrequently.org/2024/01/perfo…

"building JavaScript-first websites has been a predictably terrible idea"

#webdev #webperf #javascript #mobile #inequality

The Performance Inequality Gap, 2024

How much HTML, CSS, and JavaScript can we afford? More than in years past, but much less than frontend developers are burdening users with.

^{Alex Russell}

We can have one of two things — but not both.

We can either have a society that tolerates millionaires and billionaires polluting the planet and destroying the biosphere. Or we can have a planet with a healthy biosphere but with fewer millionaires and no billionaires at all.

This is from a recently published peer-reviewed scientific paper titled “Millionaire Spending Incompatible with 1.5 C Ambitions”...
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Much evidence suggests that the wealthiest individuals contribute disproportionately to climate change. Here we study the implications of a continued growth in the number of millionaires for emissions, and its impact on the depletion of the remaining carbon budget to limit global warming to 1.5°C.

Our findings suggest that the share of millionaires in the world population will grow from 0.7% today to 3.3% in 2050, and cause accumulated emissions equivalent to 72% of the remaining carbon budget. This significantly reduces the chance of stabilizing climate change at 1.5°C.

The concentration of wealth at the top means that a significant share of the remaining carbon budget to 1.5°C is depleted by a very small share of humanity. This comparably small group is also likely to invest its wealth in ways that further increase emissions.

Continued growth in emissions at the top makes a low-carbon transition less likely, as the acceleration of energy consumption by the wealthiest is likely beyond the system's capacity to decarbonize. To this end, we question whether policy designs such as progressive taxes targeting the high emitters will be sufficient.
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Like I said, we can have one thing or the other — but not both.

READ THE PAPER --sciencedirect.com/science/arti…

#Politics #Capitalism #Inequality #CO2 #Emissions #Environment #Climate #ClimateChange #ClimateCrisis #ClimateAction #ClimateJustice

There's an interesting new paper in the journal Ecological Economics. The title is:

"Assessing US consumers' carbon footprints reveals outsized impact of top 1%"
sciencedirect.com/science/arti…

This is from the abstract --

Unsustainable environmental degradation and extreme economic inequality are two of humanity's most pressing challenges. They are intimately linked. Climate-altering greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are disproportionately driven by consumption among wealthy and socially privileged groups, yet poorer and socially marginalized peoples face disproportionate climate harms.
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What really grabbed me, however, was the chart below, created by Andrew Fanning using data contained in the paper. It clearly illustrates the massive scale of carbon inequality in our modern society.

#Inequality #GreenhouseGases #Emissions #ClimateCrisis #ClimateJustice

What it means when people exhort non-White peeps to “start your own instance” or go to another more suitable one—-the digital version of White Flight/segregation.

“[Mastodon risks] ghettoizing the Black community in a federated space. All of the Black people go here and [other] instances have the option of engaging with them or deeding from them.]”

#BlackTwitter #BlackMastodon #Inequality

techpolicy.press/the-whiteness…

The Whiteness of Mastodon

A conversation with Dr. Johnathan Flowers about Elon Musk's changes at Twitter and the dynamics on Mastodon, the decentralized alternative.

^{Justin Hendrix (Tech Policy Press)}

Gotta love this Wealth shown to scale website mkorostoff.github.io/1-pixel-w…

It's pretty amazing storytelling. Also excellent web design. Plus my finger is tired from scrolling, I'll never reach the end!

#IncomeGap #Inequality #WealthShownToScale

Wealth, shown to scale

Wealth inequality in the United States is out of control. Here we visualize the issue in a unique way.

^{mkorostoff.github.io}